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Suit Targets Execution Drug

A lawsuit filed Tuesday in London seeks to block shipment of a drug that has been used in the U.S. to execute prisoners, the latest potential roadblock to capital punishment.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Tennessee inmate Edmund Zagorski.
Reprieve

The drug at issue is thiopental sodium, a barbiturate used by states to render death-row inmates unconscious before other lethal drugs are used to complete an execution.

States in recent months had to delay executions following an announcement by a U.S. maker of thiopental sodium, Hospira Inc., that it had exhausted its supply of the drug until possibly the first quarter of next year.

States have searched for alternate supplies from other states or from overseas suppliers. Arizona last week executed Jeffrey Landrigan using thiopental sodium supplied from Britain. The state will not disclose the company that supplied the drug.

Death penalty critics contend that a foreign supply of the drug may not be potent enough to avoid undue pain and suffering.

The U.S. Supreme Court, however, rejected a petition last week seeking to delay the Landrigan execution in order to study the thiopental sodium obtained from overseas. "There is no evidence in the record to suggest that the drug obtained from a foreign source is unsafe," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court.

The London suit was filed on behalf of Edmund Zagorski, a Tennessee inmate due to be executed in January. Tennessee has ordered a supply of sodium thiopental from a foreign source, possibly in the U.K, according to the suit, which was filed by a London law firm and by Reprieve, a London-based human rights group.

"There is a European regulation that you shouldn't export drugs that will or can be used in the course of an execution," said Clive Stafford Smith, director of Reprieve.

"We have looked at a number of different providers of thiopental sodium in the United States, some of which have sources overseas," said Dorinda Carter, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Correction.